Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2010
From Wild WebMink
? Problems With WebM?
The announcement last week at Google IO of the creation of the WebM project and the release of the VP8 codec was a positive and welcome development, finally offering an alternative to the royalty-liable H.264 and to Theora. WebM…
From Apophenia
Quitting Facebook is pointless; challenging them to do better is not
I’ve been critiquing moves made by Facebook for a long time and I’m pretty used to them being misinterpreted. When I lamented the development of the News Feed, many people believed that I thought that the technology was a failure…
From Michael Nielsen
More from Pierre Levy’s book Collective Intelligence: mankind’s emerging world in cyberspace, translated by Robert Bononno. One reason the book is notable is that, so far as I know, it was the first to really develop the term…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Beautiful BI on the IPad
An interesting post on 'beautiful mobile BI'. Next Doug Lautzenheiser on using RoamBI and other IPad BI methods. I have also experimented with the RoamBI App .. the visuals are good, maybe not beautiful. Yet I would much…
From My Biased Coin
Grade Inflation?
I know Harvard is supposed to be famous for its grade inflation, but that's not generally the case in my class (and, I think, for our CS classes in general). Having recently turned in grades, and having already started getting…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Computers Making Better Drugs
From the CACM, good overview on computer drug design. Another example of intelligence via directed simulation. The power of abduction.
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-05-23
Microsoft costs cut CSIRO IT jobs $3 million extra in licensing costs that clearly no-one had budgeted for, and lock-in that means there's no alternative but to pay up and then cut staff to make up the budget difference. Had…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Sarcasm Recognition
A paper on a method of sarcasm recognition. I use emoticons sometimes in personal communications to make it clear I am being humorous, or at least not completely serious. It might be useful to at least warn me when others use…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Programming Dojo
Moderator's Note: This blog post was written by a university student in New Zealand who is very interested in teacher feedback on a new programming teaching tool he has created. If you are interested in trying something new, …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Seeding a Startup Culture
What should a startup culture look like? Have been involved with a number now, both independent and within a much larger organization. They look similar, but are not the same. How can the best be convinced into taking these roles…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-05-22
xkcd: Infrastructures I've lost count of how many people sent me today's XKCD, complete with a bearded figure advocating use of open document formats… (tags: XKCD Humour ODF activism) Organizations Switching from Microsoft Office…
From Putting People First
Digital Death Day
On 20 May 2010 an event known as “Digital Death Day” brought together the businesses of social networking, data management and death care. One of its organisers, Jennifer Holmes, says: “We have reached a critical mass of personal…
From Putting People First
Meta Products
Meta Products is a fairly new blog (started in September 2009) related to developments on the Internet of Things. It is run by Wimer Hazenberg and Menno Huisman, both managing partners at Dutch design studio Booreiland. “Meta…
From Putting People First
Africa
Let
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Desktop
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
CSTA Voice
If you are interested in CS Education and haven't heard of CSTA's Voice newsletter (CSTA = ACM's Computer Science Teachers Association), go check it out!The CSTA Voice is a quarterly publication for members of the Computer Science…
From Schneier on Security
Applications Disclosing Required Authority
This is an interesting piece of research evaluating different user interface designs by which applications disclose to users what sort of authority they need to install themselves. Given all the recent concerns about third-party…
From BLOG@CACM
Computers, Freedom, and Privacy in a Networked Society: June 15-18, in San Jose and Cyberspace
With Facebook privacy on the cover of Time magazine and Google being investigated in Europe and the US after admitting that they collected information from home wifi networks, it’s a perfect lead-in to the 20th annual ACM conference…
From My Biased Coin
ACM elections reminder
I was asked to remind everyone that if they want to vote on the ACM elections, the deadline is May 24th. Here is the official ACM election page. You might note that Salil Vadhan is running for Member at Large... In particular…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Psychologists View of User Experience
In UX Magazine, A simple short useful article on the topic of design for user experience. From the psychologists viewpoint. These are the kinds of things that seem like they are common sense, but are often forgotten. Like the…
From Putting People First
Design Of The Other Things
Experientia participates in the exhibition “Design Of The Other Things” at the Triennale Design Museum in Milan. Stefano Maffei is the curator of the exhibition, which explores the ways in which the world of design is changing…
From Putting People First
Experience design: technology for all the right reasons
Experience Design: Technology for All the Right Reasons Marc Hassenzahl Morgan & Claypool, 2010 In his In the blink of an eye, Walter Murch, the Oscar-awarded editor of The English Patient, Apocalypse Now, and many other outstanding…
From Putting People First
Special issue on experience design
Last year, Mark Blythe, Effie Law and Marc Hassenzahl edited a special issue on Experience Design in the New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia. It features a more designerly perspective on and some reflections about Experience…
From Putting People First
The psychologist
Dr. Susan Weinschenk is a psychologist by training and education. She has been applying psychology to the design of technology for 30 years and is the author of Neuro Web Design: What makes them click?. She is Chief of User…
From Putting People First
BeAware
BeAware, an EU-supported research project, has created a solution to motivate and empower citizens to become active energy consumers, by offering them the opportunity to raise awareness of their own power consumption in real…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wal-Mart Supports Smart Card Payments
This could result in considerable changes in US retail payment systems. The commonly used 'signature-based' methods were cited as a waste of time. Wal-Mart to support smartcard paymentsRetail giant's reported move to chip-and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On Biosimilars
Bain writes on Biosimilars, a term I have not heard for a while, though it came up in research work.Biosimilars: A marathon, not a sprint for pharmaby Bain partners Nils Behnke, Norbert Hueltenschmidt, Andy Pasternak and Karan…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-05-21
How to hide OpenOffice.org lines if a field is empty I have been looking for the way to do this for ages and ages, thanks to Solveig for the tip. (tags: OpenOffice.org howto)
From Schneier on Security
Automobile Security Analysis
"Experimental Security Analysis of a Modern Automobile," by a whole mess of authors:
Abstract: Modern automobiles are no longer mere mechanical devices; they are pervasively monitored and controlled by dozens of digital computers…From Computational Complexity
The End of Numb3rs
Sunday marks the end of the TV series that deals with the numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42. Monday marks the end of the TV series called "24". But lets talk about Numb3rs, which CBS officially recently announced would not be renewed…